Polar Eyes the book is here

Where do penguins go to dance? What is it like to sleep in an igloo? And have you ever wondered how ancient ice can be used as a time machine?

Take the journey into Polar Eyes, an interactive new children’s book from CSIRO Education.

Part diary, part photographic journey, children and parents alike will be spellbound as Tanya covers topics ranging from thinning sea ice to snotty elephant seals, accompanied by quirky and poignant drawings by artist Nicholas Hutcheson.

Buy your copy now from www.csiroshop.com

Stay tuned

Where do penguins go to dance? What is it like in Antarctica? How do animals and humans survive down south? I’m home now, but make sure you stay tuned to the Polar Eyes website. It will be updated throughout 2007/2008 – International Polar Year.

Slicing through silence

I was awake in the early hours this morning listening to the sound of the ship crunching its way through the pack ice. Some people said that we could be in the ice for the next couple of days. Others were confident that we would hit the open ocean by morning…and we did. Apart from occasional bergs, there is no ice to be seen. I read in Tom Griffith’s Antarctic journal that Edward Wilson, of Scott’s expeditions, described the movement of swell in pack ice as constant and gentle, ‘like breathing in sleep’. I could not agree more – I will really miss this.


Maybe it was because we were leaving, but the passage out of Casey seemed to be one of the most spectacular of the voyage so far. As the snow shower disappeared it revealed a dead calm sea dotted with icebergs and a sunset that defied photography.

Yesterday, it took all day to finish up the cargo operations. The crew were at it from eight in the morning until after eight in the evening. Finally at 8.30pm with a blast on the horn we were off. As snow petrels circled above, a sudden snow shower added atmosphere to the occasion. The remaining Casey expeditioners waved goodbye on a hilltop and a flare was let off at the station, signalling our departure.

Up, up and away - my last day at Casey

Today I interviewed Justin Wood from the Bureau of Meteorology before we changed into some special protective clothing and released a weather balloon together.

Twice a day, every day of the year, weather balloons are released simultaneously from almost 900 locations worldwide. At Casey they’re released at 7.15am and 7.15pm, which corresponds with the same time that everyone else in the world releases their weather balloons. As the balloon is going up through the atmosphere it transmits information every two seconds, including temperature, pressure, wind speed and wind direction, back to surface observers. Justin explained that the information collected helps provides local data for meteorologists to make forecasts, predict storms and data for research and computer forecast models.

Computer forecast models which use weather balloon data are used by forecasters worldwide, from the Bureau of Meteorology to your local TV weather presenter! Without this information, accurate forecasts beyond a few hours would be almost impossible.


The balloons, which start out at about 2 metres wide before release, expand to about 6 metres in diameter as they rise! This balloon burst after travelling more than 30km into the atmosphere.



Earlier, Torsten, Cristina and I discovered a snow petrel nest on Reeves Hill.



After the changeover ceremony we departed the station by barge for the trip to the ship, where the galley staff provided a late dinner. I was most grateful. For two weeks I had experienced quite mild weather by Antarctic standards. As if to prove a point, yesterday afternoon the wind rose, and underdressed, I became quite cold. In fact, I was so cold that I had to wear my down jacket for the next 2 hours inside the ship where it is a comfortable 19 degrees. I had felt what it is like to drop your core temperature by degree or so, on the coldest continent on Earth, and I had learnt a lesson. Always be prepared in Antarctica, even if you are just waiting for a barge for an hour.

Penguin wonderland

Today we explored the inlets and islands around the Browning Peninsula, which is about one hour in a small boat from Casey Station. Adélie penguins were everywhere - swimming alongside us, leaping gracefully like dolphins in arches from the water and diving off the ice floes as we approached.

Our first stop was an island where some juvenile southern elephant seals had been spotted earlier in the week. We nosed into an ice crack next to some rocks and I had to jump out onto a chunk of sea ice that probably won’t be there next week.

The southern elephant seal is the largest of the seals. Adult males weigh over 3000kg! Even though they looked pretty big to me already, these guys were just babies - about a year old. I had heard that elephant seals can produce a deafening roar from their trunk-like noses to scare off rivals. But there was none of that today. All we could hear and smell was lots of farting and burping!


The southern elephant seal gets its name for being super-big and having a nose with a small trunk.


Southern elephant seals are found throughout the subantarctic, on Antarctic islands and on the Antarctic peninsula.

Back in the boat, I ran my hand through the icy water as we slowed down to navigate our way through the ice again. But Marie was getting ready to do much more than that. We were following a channel between two islands en route to an inlet where Marie was planning snorkel with her underwater camera. There would be no snorkelling there today though – a leopard seal was lounging about nearby. Although clumsy and ungraceful on land, in the water they are excellent swimmers and can dive to great depths hunting for fish, squid and other seals. Adélie penguins are their favourite food though, so it was hilarious to watch a group of them taunt this leopard seal on land.


Leopard seals are known as the most ferocious seal in the Antarctic. They live amongst the pack ice in summer and on the more northerly subantarctic islands in winter. They are the only seal that preys on other seal species.


Marie did eventually make a splash in Antarctic waters. Her beautiful underwater footage will air on Totally Wild later this year.





Vonna, Marie and I take a break inside the melon hut on Peterson's Island.

Day 2 Wilkes Station: Project igloo

The term igloo, or iglu, is derived from the Eskimo word igdlu meaning ‘house’.

How often do you get the chance to build an igloo in Antarctica?

After really enjoying my night out in a bivy bag at Watt’s station I was keen to try out another form of shelter. The Inuit (the indigenous people of the Arctic) once lived in igloos made of snow and I was eager to experience both the process of building and staying in one for myself. I didn’t need any more convincing and Marie thought the process of building an igloo would make a great SCOPE episode. There will also be an igloo activity in the May/JuneScientriffic so I set up my camera and tripod to record our progress. Then it was time to get to work.


An experienced Inuit can build a snow igloo in between one and two hours. Ours took five hours, with some interruptions...

Our AAD field manual recommended allowing between 1-4 hours for the type of igloo we had selected. We chose the Scottish igloo technique – which is apparently much quicker method than the traditional igloo. It wasn’t easy, but it was great fun and we felt quite impressed with ourselves in the end. Here’s how we did it and a few things we learnt along the way!

* Building an igloo is not a speedy process. You need plenty of fluids and energy food (think lots of chocolate and cheese and chutney sandwiches…). There are quicker ways to build an emergency shelter if you are stuck out in the field, but they’re not as fun or challenging!
* Choose your site carefully. You will need a huge local supply of firm, dry, crunchy snow and, if possible, a hut or tent nearby as a 'back up' if things don't work out.
* Mark out a circular floor plan - around 3 metres diameter is ideal.
* Next you can either quarry a series of snow blocks using a standard garden variety saw, or use a mould – we used plastic storage boxes. Place your snow blocks in a circle on the ground. The next layer overlaps the previous one by about 5 centimetres and so on. Gradually reduce the size of your blocks so that a dome shape is formed.
* It's important to start forming the dome shape from ground level otherwise the top of the igloo will be out of reach before the dome is complete. Remember, you’re building an igloo not snow palace!
* A pack should be placed at the door and removed later. Optional: a slab of snow to keep out any lost or curious penguins.
* Cut a final top block to fit the ceiling.
* Finally, pack snow into the gaps between the snow blocks, leaving a small hole near the top for ventilation.


Surprisingly, snow makes good insulation. An insulator is a material that does not conduct heat very well, like an oven mitt. Snow traps your body heat inside the igloo, eventually warming the space up, and sheltering you from the cold wind.

Happy New Year!

Last night I headed back to the Aurora for a pirate-themed New Year's Eve party. Limited resources encouraged some interesting interpretations of the theme, ranging from a parrot constructed out of a laundry detergent container to limited edition spray painted pirate t-shirts that some of the crew were sporting.

After welcoming 2007 between cries of ‘Arrrrr’ and 'Cheers' I was up early and on the first barge back to Casey. The day was to about to become a busy one, with station refuelling scheduled to begin today. I was heading out of town though to Wilkes Station.



Wilkes was established in 1957 by the United States of America as part of the International Geophysical Year program in Antarctica. The station was built in an area heavily affected by snow and every winter it would get buried. In 1959 the Americans handed ‘operational command’ of the station to Australia and basically walked out of the station, leaving everything as it was. Today, most of it remains.


Vonna drove us to Wilkes in a Hagglund - an Antarctic all-terrain vehicle.

With batteries charged, memory cards wiped and survival packs in tow, we headed towards Whitney Point. I had been looking forward to this for months ever since Vonna mentioned that she had been able to arrange a special permit for us to visit this area, which is home to thousands of Adélie penguins.



I found it a struggle most days in Antarctica to not say the word 'amazing' over and over again, but this day was the hardest. We could hear the penguins before we could see them properly. When we finally arrived after scooting around the coastline from the Wilkes Hilton I was bit overwhelmed. I was surrounded by hundreds of penguins, many of them with newborn chicks delicately tucked underneath their bellies. Like us, they appeared to have different personalities and roles within their community. Some (I suspect they were juveniles) would run fearlessly towards us, seemingly to carry out an immediate inspection of us and our equipment. Others were quite dismissive of our presence and some (perhaps fathers to newborns) adopted a protective stance around their chicks. I witnessed lots of feeding, some mating and two eggs hatching.

I’m not sure why this day was so amazing. Perhaps it was the sheer number of penguins, the time of year or the unbelievable weather that day. I do know that I felt very fortunate to spend a few hours just watching and listening to the penguins at Whitney Point.


The 'Wilkes Hilton' is a hut that is located approximately 1 km from the abandoned Wilkes Station on Stonehocker Point.


Cup of tea time.

Casey New Years

Early this morning we moved cautiously around some magnificent bergs along Peterson Bank before making our approach to Newcomb Bay and Casey Station. The day and the sea were calm, and camera memory cards filled up again as snow petrels circled above and the local wildlife dived off their floating ice lounge rooms, out of the Aurora’s path and into the dark waters of the bay.


After spending some more time on the open ocean it was exciting to have the continent just outside my porthole again.

We anchored in open water about 1500 metres away from the station. Even though I had been to Davis Station just 5 days earlier, it was still stunning to travel for days across a wilderness of ocean and ice and then see buildings, and people emerging from them, on the horizon.


By 8am the station leader and a small team were onboard to brief us and the first of the expeditioners were sent ashore to prepare for the cargo operations ahead. My trip to land this time was in a small boat called a Pagodroma.


The station is made up of red, green, orange and blue buildings which look a bit like a Legoland from a distance. This is the Davis Station field store - my home for the next week.

Goodbye Davis

After five days at Davis, Australia’s most southerly Antarctic station, I’m back on the Aurora and heading towards Casey Station. Casey is situated in an area of the low rocky Windmill Islands and peninsulas. With more than more than 50 islands in the group, the Windmill Islands are home to tens of thousands of birds, including Adelie penguins, giant petrels, skuas and snow petrels. I can’t wait!


I am travelling on Voyage 2. You can find information about other Australian Antarctic voyages for the current season here.

A busy Christmas in Antarctica

These Adélie penguins didn’t seem to mind spending their Christmas day with me.


Males and females take it in turns to keep the two eggs warm, and to guard them from marauding birds. When I visited this rookery they were keeping a close eye on the circling skuas above that prey on the eggs and young of Adelie penguins over the summer.


Skuas are strong fliers. They will fiercely defend their nest territories from all comers, including humans!


Christmas day at Davis Station.